Chapter 20: Annabeth Chase Takes a Tumbl
It was around 10 AM the next day inside a darkened Athenian cabin. Annabeth once again blew her nose, and tossed the tissue into the wastebasket next to her bed. She had meant to go help Percy talk to Nico, and she had meant to also help Thalia talk to Artemis. However, upon waking up with sore throat, a headache, and a congested nose, Annabeth realized that she had indeed caught a summer cold. It had hit quick and without any warning, much like a ninja. Annabeth wondered if it was punishment for telling Thalia Apollo's Xbox secret.
Suddenly, the door flew open. "Annabeth! What are you doing in bed! You've got to help me talk to Artemis, remember?"
"I can't." Annabeth coughed. "I'm thick." She wheezed as Thalia stood over her bed.
"You promised you'd help me!" Thalia whined in response.
"I can barely move." Annabeth protested. "I'm sthure you can do it yourthelf."
"Not fair!" Thalia once again whined. "This is the worst possible time for you to catch a summer cold, you know that?"
"Not my fault my imbune thystem thucks." Annabeth croaked. "Bethides, Ardemisth will listhen to you more than she would me."
"Gah, fine! You've obviously left me with little other option here." Thalia surrendered. "Get well, or else!"
"Yes yes, I will." Annabeth agreed waving to Thalia half-heartedly as she walked out the door.
Annabeth turned over in her bunk and shivered. She remembered the last time she had gotten sick at camp with a cold was right after she came back from the sea of monsters, and it took a good week to recover fully. She hoped this time wouldn't be like the last, but was a little more ok with her current sickness considering that Percy would actually be willing to spend time with her while she was sick, as opposed to stay ten feet away at all times when he was thirteen.
Annabeth was about to drift off into a sickness induced sleep when footsteps interrupted her daze.
"Hey…" A voice whispered behind Annabeth. "Hey, hey Annabeth. Hey Annabeth. Annabeth, hey."
"Malcolm." Ananbeth hissed, knowing the annoying voice of her brother from anywhere. "Shut up."
"Well fine, be that way to your brother who may or may not have a cure for your ailment." Malcolm responded.
Annabeth sat up and looked at Malcolm blearily. "You what?"
"I've calculated the exact amount of Nectar needed to cure the common cold! This should do the trick." Malcolm said, holding up a shot glass of golden liquid. Where he got the shot glass Annabeth hadn't a clue, but something told her the Dionysus cabin might have had a hidden stash.
"Malcolm, you know as well as I do that nectar doesthn't cure coldsth." Annabeth said, flopping back down on her side.
"Yes it does. Chiron just tells us not to use it to cure colds because if we take too much we burst into flames, which is arguably worse than having a cold." Malcolm rebutted. "Now lets do shots! Shots shots-shots shots shots Err' boday!" He chanted, handing her the shot glass.
Annabeth turned back over towards Malcolm, who seemed unusually cheerful today, and sighed. "If I die," Annabeth said, looking at Malcolm with a disgruntled expression, "you stay away from my funeral." She took a deep breath and took the shot. Her head instantly uncongested itself, almost making her light headed, and her throat felt as if it had just been healed from the inside out. It taste good, like nectar normally does, but there was a distinct after burn that she was not used to. "Oh look, here come the flames." She groaned, flopping down again.
"It'll clear up, trust me." Malcolm said. "Would it help to look at funny pictures on Tumblr?"
"On what now?" Annabeth once again croaked. The cold had indeed subsided, but the flames in her chest had yet to.
"You don't know about Tumblr?" Malcolm asked with a smile. "It's the word of the day!"
"Oh gods." Annabeth groaned. "Why are you so cheery today?"
"Because reasons." He answered, getting his laptop out. "This is mine, see." Malcolm pointed to the screen. "You can post just about anything. From quotes, to links, to gifs!" He said enthusiastically.
"What's a gif?" Annabeth asked, the heartburn slowly subsiding.
"A moving picture." Malcolm answered, pointing to one of the gifs on his page, which was of Carlton from the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air doing the "Carlton."
Annabeth watched as Malcolm scrolled through his page. He had video game gifs, links, quotes, and pictures. In fact, the name of his Tumblr was 'Captain Malcolm; King of the Elder Scrolls.' If Malcolm wasn't a video game master, no one was. Annabeth didn't know if Athena was proud of her son and his use of skill and strategy, or embarrassed that her gifts were being used on something so trivial. Apparently, Malcolm didn't care either way.
"So it's basically a site for the random and obscene?" Annabeth concluded.
"Well not all Tumblr profiles are the same. See, look at this one," Malcolm gestured as he clicked on a new link from his own. "This one is dedicated to weird facts."
"Huh, interesting." Annabeth mumbled as she rolled onto her stomach to get a better look. The amount of useless crap people could post online was genuinely frightening.
"Yeah, and this one is all about My Little Pony. Actually, there are a lot of them that are dedicated to that…" Malcolm said, looking at the side links and rolling his eyes.
"Oh gods, who's idea was it to photoshop a human face onto an orange?" Annabeth asked, seeing another gif with just that.
"Oh, that's the annoying orange." Malcolm said like it was obvious.
"The what now?" Annabeth asked. "Wait. Do I want to know?"
"You have no choice now! Mwahaha!" Malcolm laughed evilly as he clicked onto YouTube.
"I feel much better and am in a position to leave at any time now." Annabeth reminded him, indeed feeling better since her shot of nectar.
"Yeah ok, whatever. Just watch this." Malcolm said dismissively, pointing to the screen.
Annabeth turned her attention over to Malcolm's laptop and watched. The videos were not anything Annabeth had expected. They were literally videos of fruit with faces photoshopped onto them. She found it weird, and a little unnerving.
"Hey… hey apple! Hey Apple! Hey!" The orange chanted.
"Oh look, it's you." Annabeth deadpanned.
"Shh… just watch." Malcolm urged.
They continued to watch several of these YouTube videos in silence, each one more annoying and repetitive than the last, before Annabeth couldn't take it anymore. "This really is the most annoying thing I've ever seen! I'm leaving."
"No, no wait you can't!" Malcolm protested. "I want to-"
"Malcolm I don't care." Annabeth said, cutting him off. "I don't want to watch anymore annoying fruits!"
"It's not the orange again I swear!" Annabeth stopped moving towards the door and looked at her brother. "Let's make you a Tumblr!"
"Do we have to?" Annabeth asked, still not understanding what put Malcolm in such a happy mood, and not really in the mood to goof off when she had promises to keep.
"Yes. Yes we do." Malcolm responded sternly. "Pick an idea, any idea."
"The idea of I have to go help my best friend with man trouble or else she may eat me." Annabeth deadpanned, slumping back down on the bed. "That's an idea."
"Nah, something funny. Or cool." Malcolm suggested.
"Why do I let you talk me into horrible things?" Annabeth groaned.
"This isn't horrible. Consider it another immersion into the wonderful wide web." Malcolm said, walking over to Annabeth's trunk and grabbing her laptop.
"And I need to be immersed because?" Annabeth asked, still not seeing the point.
"Because the world is changing due to the Internet everyday, and Half-Blood isn't part of the real world. Like it or not, this will all become mainstream in a year tops." Malcolm answered. "Ok, now pick something."
"How about I just post everything weird that you've ever showed me, and call it 'brotherly love.'" Annabeth suggested, meaning it more as a sarcastic comment than anything serious.
Malcolm stared at her for a few seconds with a thoughtful expression. "Anna, that's a brilliant idea."
"Wait what?" Annabeth cocked an eyebrow. She meant the comment as an insult, not an actual idea.
"But don't just limit it to me! Post everything anyone shows you on the Internet that you haven't seen before!" Malcolm exclaimed with an excited expression on his face. "Ok, get your laptop out. Let's start posting!"
In no time, Annabeth and Malcolm had created a new Tumblr blog by the name of Annabeth Chase's Big Super Awesome Fun Time Blog, and had posted everything anyone had showed her. From Malcolm's YouTube videos, to weird pictures, horrible ways to kill Sims, movies, and even Slender Man, her blog was soon brimming with oddities. By the time they were done, it looked like the Internet threw up on a blog. It even had a Nyan-cat background.
"Well I must say that this is not your average posting." Malcolm commented as Annabeth made the last few changes.
"Let's just hope that the comments I get aren't from people who are complaining of brain damage suffered from clicking on this page." Annabeth once again deadpanned. "Alright, as fun as this was I really have to get going."
"Thalia?" Malcolm guessed.
Annabeth nodded. "You have no earthly idea."
"I can only imagine." Malcolm responded sarcastically. "I've got to head out too. I'm suppose to teach bo staff one o' one in ten minutes."
"Well look at you being all responsible for once." Annabeth jibed.
"Once in a blue moon, this Athenian likes to make his mother proud." Malcolm responded with a cheesy faux-heroic smile.
Both of them stood up and walked outside. Annabeth felt light-years better than she had when she woke up, though her sinuses felt like they may crack open and start bleeding at any minute, and she still felt lethargic.
"What are you doing outside?" Percy's voice came from her left as Annabeth stepped off the porch.
"I promised to help Thalia to help talk to Artemis, and I promised you I'd help find Nico and talk to him." Annabeth said, falling in next to him.
"Aren't you sick?" He asked.
"Malcolm apparently calculated exactly how much nectar it takes to cure the common cold. Though, I think he's still a little off." Annabeth explained, stretching to try and wake her muscles up.
"Well I think I may have found Nico. I'll meet you in my cabin in a half hour?" Percy asked.
Annabeth nodded. "Sounds good. Let me just go clear things up with… oh no…"
"Um… earth to Annabeth. What are you- oh my gods." Percy caught site of what Annabeth was staring at and realized that Artemis may have been more serious with her threats than either he or Annabeth had thought. In front of them was a seriously pissed off looking jackalope.
"Oh my gods THALIA!" Annabeth cried, running over to the deer-bunny hybrid and picking it up, holding the creature eye level. "I thought you said she'd understand!"
"She did," A voice from behind her responded. "That's Phoebe."
Annabeth turned around to see Thalia, looking just as human as she ever did. She turned back towards the Phoebelope and gave an evil grin. "Serves you right for ambushing me."
"How long is she stuck like that?" Percy asked, now laughing at the hunter's predicament.
"A week." Thalia responded, now giggling despite herself. "We should paint her antlers bright orange." Phoebe kicked and squirmed in protest.
"No, let's not cause any more trouble then we've already." Annabeth said, trying to keep a grip on Phoebe so she wouldn't drop her. Phoebe stopped squirming, but the pissed off look in her eyes didn't lighten up.
"So what happened?" Annabeth asked as she set Phoebe down.
"I'm out." Thalia answered with a shrug.
"You're out?" Annabeth asked, looking for more clarification.
"Well when I went to talk to Artemis, I asked her what she would do in my situation." Thalia started.
"And?" Percy coaxed.
"Artemis told me that she always thought I had gotten in for the wrong reasons, and that I deserve to live as normal a life as I can." Thalia answered. "So she let me off scot-free. From this moment on, I'm no long Thalia the Huntress, and am now Thalia, Daughter of Zeus."
"That's amazingly awesome." Annabeth said almost at a whisper and almost in happy tears. "This means you're sticking around then?"
"Looks like it." Thalia answered with a genuine smile. The two friends embraced, but were quickly interrupted.
"Alright, I hate to break this up but we've got to find Nico." Percy motioned back towards his cabin. "If he's still in the state that is." He added with a rundown tone.
"What?" Thalia squeaked.
"Nico may or may not have concluded that he's more trouble than he's worth and left camp." Percy explained sheepishly. "So we have to go find him."
Thalia stared at Percy, dumfounded. "That, asshole!" She growled. "Who does he think he is just running off like that when he knows exactly how much shit he's put me through? The second we find him, I'm going to kick his ass!"
Phoebe and Annabeth looked at each other, the jackalope seeming like she didn't want to miss any of the action.
"Ok, you said you know where he is?" Annabeth asked Percy.
"Yes. Well… kind of." Percy answered.
"That's not a very assuring answer, Perseus." Thalia growled taking a step forward, signaling that she wasn't afraid to attack.
"Hang on now, let me finish!" Percy protested. "I think I know where he's going. Or at least, someone who does."
"Nico hardly tells anyone anything about his whereabouts." Annabeth reminded Percy. "The only one he's close enough to tell where he's off to is…" She trailed off, knowing exactly whom Nico would tell.
"Get your purple shirts and dog tags." Percy instructed. "We're headed to Jupiter."
Boy did I hit a major dry spell. I literally couldn't think of ANYTHING to write about for WEEKS. I was just sitting in my room, playing Skyrim, thinking about writing. And yet, I couldn't! Nothing came to mind! Weirdly enough, this chapter came to me after watching hilariously amazing Bollywood film by the name of Om Shanti Om. You should check it out. Also, next chapter wraps up Thalico. BUT, we're not done. Oh no, we're never done. Next, Malcolm get's a story line!